It was such a relief when WCAG 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation back in December of 2008. But in the fast paced world of the web, nothing stays the same for very long. Even WCAG could use many improvements, especially after over three years. (Time sure flies!)
Jared Smith (@Jared_W_Smith) of WebAIM recently wrote an excellent article WCAG Next which explains some of the top issues and suggests how they can be improved. I pretty much agree with all. Here is a summary:
- Remove the CAPTCHA Exception – should prohibit all CAPTCHA at Level AA.
- Media Guidelines – a few suggestions here plus a recommendation for restructuring.
- Contrast at Level A -minimal contrast requirement needed for Level A.
- Decrease the 200% Text Resizing Requirement -biggest burden of Level AA.
- Clarify Images of Text -this is subjective.
- Specify Mechanisms to Bypass Blocks – add techniques such as skip-to, headings, landmark roles, and others.
- “Can Be Programmatically Determined” -a confusing aspect of page conformance.
- Require Keyboard Focus Indicators at Level A – “There is no reason why this should not be a Level A requirement.” Totally!
- Remove Parsing Requirement – no direct benefit and difficult to test for accessibility; possibly move code validation requirement to Level AAA.
2 replies on “WCAG Improvements”
“Clarify Images of Text -this is subjective.” Does this mean in the sense of search engines? or it refers to the optical character recog kind of option?
The article referenced goes into detail. Basically, it’s unclear if an effect that could possibly be recreated with text and CSS3 must be in order to meet the Level AA success criterion.